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(1939–2005),

American journalist and writer, born in Louisville, Kentucky. The work for which he is best known, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1972), first appeared in Rolling Stone magazine, to which he was a regular contributor; subtitled ‘a savage journey to the heart of the American Dream’, it is an account of a heavily drugged visit to Las Vegas, offering a brutal, funny, and often horrifying dissection of American culture. No less provocative was Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 (1973), his coverage (again for Rolling Stone) of the 1972 American presidential campaign. He spent a year riding with the Hell's Angels, ran for sheriff of Aspen, Colorado, in 1970, and subsequently awarded himself a doctorate. With Tom Wolfe and Joan Didion a pioneer of New Journalism, his own irreverent political and cultural writing (‘Gonzo journalism’) has been collected into four volumes.